Second Wind
by xanaphorax
Summary: When Iris' secret comes out during the Battle of Sokovia, she assumes its something that will be buried under the rubble of the fallen city. But when she's recruited to join the New Avengers Initiative and is tasked with stopping HYDRA's new effort, she may discover that the falling of Sokovia unearthed more about her than it buried. Pietro/OC
1. The Right Moment

**(Chapter 1) The Right Moment**

 **Author's Note** :: _Hey! Welcome, welcome. This is both a standalone story AND it functions partially as a follow up to my previous Avengers' story, Parting Shot. Not that you had to have read Parting Shot because there's a different cast of characters here except for the Avengers of course. I like to think of this story kind of like Lion King 1.5—but better. Anyway, if you like it, please let me know with a review. I have a really cool idea I want to play out in my Avengers stories, but first I wanna make sure people are onboard with this character and where the plot seems to be headed._

 _I'm waking up to ash and dust  
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust  
I'm breathing in the chemicals_

 _Novi Grad, Sokovia_

She had always known her fieldwork would be hard—emotionally, academically, hell, she even suspected physically. After all, the fieldwork was the crux of her research for her doctoral dissertation—if the work wasn't going to push her to the brink of mental breakdown, she wouldn't be doing it. That's not the way Columbia's Dissertation Committees rolled.

So, she knew before she started—before she had even picked a concentration or a country to work in—that a solid year or two of her life would be blood, sweat, and tears all for 300 pages of writing and the name Dr. Iris Tate.

But it wasn't until after she submitted the paperwork declaring her intent to study transnationalism in gateway countries that she realized she'd signed her soul away to hell. She couldn't even call it a deal with the devil because there was no true benefit to her decision except for a moderately relevant dissertation. No, she had voluntarily agreed to take up residence in a country ravaged by riots, rebellion and petty wars all for the sake of education.

That was how she found herself in Sokovia, a country possessing nothing the rest of the world valued except loosely guarded borders to more significant countries. And while the living conditions fluctuated between dismal and downright dangerous, and the people were inherently (and understandably) distrustful of outsiders, she couldn't have picked a better place for her fieldwork. Over the passing months, she became captivated by the stories of people whose lives had been decimated by outsiders' greed and war mongering and inspired by their belief in the power of civil disobedience. She reveled in the exhilaration of surging with a crowd, shouting chants and brandishing signs in angry Sokovian. She enjoyed exploring the geography of the country, occasionally popping in and out of the neighboring countries. She never laughed harder than when she was making fun of the people from those countries with her newfound Sokovian friends. She savored her meals of paprikash and Tokaji Aszú. Sure, the field work was grueling but all things considered, it was only minorly neuroticism-inducing. As such, Iris decided that maybe, just maybe, she actually kind of loved Sokovia.

Of course, that was before the city started to fly.

Once Novi Grad was airborne, she decided she was firmly rooted back in the camp that Sokovia was a huge mistake. Sure, the robots had been a bit of a hint, but it wasn't until she looked out and saw the building behind to hers tumbling off the side of the earth that she was entirely certain that, contrary to popular belief, hell was a few miles _above_ the earth's surface.

Iris stood at her window for a moment, watching clouds and sky pass down and away from her sight. And then a robot cut across the view and Iris took it as her signal to take off, leaving behind her wallet, keys, and the computer where she had finished the final draft of her dissertation last week. She thundered down the stairs, running away from the small apartment where she had spent the last two years of her life and out towards the street. She only made it to the doorway before she stopped dead in her tracks.

She had heard the crashes and the screams and the sounds of sirens and gunfire. She had seen the smoke and robots flying through the sky, darting through the buildings surrounding hers and swooping down to the ground. What she hadn't seen were the actual streets of the city laden with rubble and trash, fires springing up and various electrical works sparking. It looked like the end of the world. _It might_ _be the end of the world_ , she thought.

Movement caught Iris' eye as she saw Baba Branka, the elderly landlady and proprietor of the downstairs shop being ushered away by…Wanda? She hadn't seen Wanda in about a year—not that she had really looked for her. Wanda wasn't a friend as much as a figurehead—someone who had led a good number of the protests and riots when Iris had arrived. But, when the doctor came with an offer too good to refuse, Wanda and a good number of other Sokovians had disappeared along with him. And now—Wanda looked… _different_. She seemed darker in some way. Maybe it was her hair or maybe her skin was paler or maybe it was a bit of both—but she had a haunted look about her that Iris vaguely recognized. Her wonder was cut short as a blast blew past her before exploding into a car, drawing Iris' attention to the robots who were currently being picked off by Hawkeye, the _Avenger_. He stood further down the street, calmly firing arrows into the heads of the metallic creatures, still amongst the chaos surrounding him. He ducked, and even that motion was oddly static, especially in contrast to the blast that flew over him and hit the bookstore, parts of the stone crumbling down and nearly hitting Baba Branka who skirted across the street, ushered away by the police—people she had previously referred to as pigs and dogs.

Another robot swooped down, aiming for Wanda. With a circular movement of her arms and a weird reddish stream of energy, she threw the robot back—straight to the door where Iris currently stood. Iris ducked to the side, flicking her hands up, palms out, as if attempting to shield herself. The robot veered to the left where it crashed into the ground, exploding into flames. Iris' hands shook as she looked up from the door, making brief eye contact with Wanda. The fear was evident in every part of the other girl's body—she seemed to be frozen with her arms still outstretched, face openly filled with terror. Her wild eyes seemed to flick about, from Iris' face to the robots that were converging around her and Clint. Another shot was fired at Wanda from above, and it came spiraling down to the earth.

"Go! Go! Move!" Hawkeye barked out, running to Wanda and putting an arm around her before forcing her to jump with him through a window, narrowly dodging the explosion. Iris pulled herself back inside the door, leaning her back against the wall and breathing heavily.

Iris didn't crack under pressure. It was a point of pride. She didn't crack when she wrote her dissertation or when she fit four years of undergrad into three. She didn't crack when she had to move back to America and jump right into her first and last year public high school. She didn't even crack when she had to say her "big goodbye" to her boyfriend back home. She would be damned if she started cracking now. It was one thing to be frightened—it was another to let fear control you.

Iris peered around the door frame, looking down the street. Most of the robots were preoccupied with firing into the building that Hawkeye and Wand had disappeared into. A few detached themselves from the group and started to wander down the street towards her. One ran into a building on the right side of the street, and another took off into the sky to fly further down. The last headed her way.

 _Why aren't they focused on those two? What are they looking for?_ Iris wondered as she withdrew back into the building, holding herself completely still. _Do they know I'm here?_ A heavy clunking and scraping sound of metal brushing against the pavement could be heard now, even over all the other noises. She stopped breathing. This thing coming to kill her.

She had often pictured her death—call it a fascination with the morbid or a terrible childhood, either way she had never—in any of her imaginations—pictured robots. Aliens? Sure. There was plenty of stuff out there to justify aliens' existence and it was only natural that as sentient beings some, like humans, would be homicidal. And there was little humans could do but speculate how that homicidal tendency would manifest. But _killer_ _robots_?The idea just seemed too cliché to ever come into fruition. Besides, humans had control over whether or not killer robots became a thing. Never had Iris believed that someone would be so stupidly arrogant as to create a robot without putting in any backdoor protocols. Not after _2001: A Space Odyssey_ , _Terminator_ , and _I, Robot_. But here she was, living in hell and about to be killed by a metal demon. _No_ , she told herself as the clinking of metal grew even nearer. _I've got shit to do._

The scraping sounds stopped, and rather than letting the eerie calm pervade, Iris spun out from behind the wall and with a great push of her hands and flexing of her fingers, she sent the robot hurdling backwards into the building across from hers where it crashed into the wall before falling down into a heap of metal. As she watched the robot spinning away, an arrow cut across her line of vision, piercing the empty air where the robot's head had once been. Iris snapped her head to the right and made eye contact with Hawkeye. His face was one of open surprise—both eyebrows lifted, lips slightly parted, eyes wide. He shook his head slightly before rolling towards her and away from a blast, stopping momentarily to stand up and kill a few more robots. Iris began to make her way towards him, flinging an arm to the side and causing one of the robots to collide with his compatriot before both sparked out and dropped to the ground.

"Do you speak English?" She was close enough to him that she could hear his quick, rough voice broken up with pants for air.

She nodded, throwing up her arms over her head as another blast fired down at them. Hawkeye merely aimed upwards, loosing an arrow into the robot.

"Are you an Enhanced?" Hawkeye shouted.

"A what?" Iris dropped her arms from over her head and stared at him.

"How are you doing that? With your hands?" He aimed a few arrows over her shoulder letting off one after another, each resulting in a telling metallic _thud._

"I don't know how it works," Iris shook her head. "I've been able to do it since I was little."

"Do what?"

"I can control the wind—the air. Kind of," she added, and his attention snapped onto her. His gaze was intense and hard—almost physical.

"Can you get this place back on the ground?" he asked, his voice as urgent as his gaze.

She did her best to give him her own hard look, "Do you really think we'd still be up here if I could?"

He weighed this, tilting his head from one side to the other. "Can you fly?" he asked.

"Do you really think _I'd_ still be up here if I could?" she modified her question. For all of the times she had tried to fly—and there were plenty of those—she had never succeeded at lifting herself more than half an inch off the ground. If she was falling she had somewhat better success, but usually it ended with her coming crashing down—she had broken her arm more than a few times as a kid. "I'm not an Avenger."

Hawkeye searched her eyes as if trying to read all of who she was, her abilities, history, personality, secrets all at once. From behind Hawkeye, a robot raised its hand. Iris didn't say anything, instead she threw her arms out, the wind hitting the blast like a wall and causing it to blow back into the robot. Hawkeye looked over his shoulder at the damage.

"You're close enough."

Iris looked at the robots trooping down the street behind them, and with a great sweep of her arms, as if she were being jerked by a roller coaster, she caused the three in the front line to crash into one another before smashing into the side of a building. Hawkeye looked as if he was about to say something else and then he suddenly grabbed her, pulling her down to crouch behind a car. The two of them breathed heavily, gathering air into their lungs. "What—?" Iris started before she was cut off by the sound of a robot clambered on top of the car and shot down at them. Her reaction was more instinct than defense—she flew up her hands, fingers spread wide and the shot seemed to rebound off a wall of air, in the next second she pushed forward, and the robot fell away.

"Good break," Hawkeye nodded before standing up. He fired an arrow and in the next second the doors to the building nearby were flung open and Wanda stepped out.

Something had happened to her inside of the building. Iris wasn't sure what exactly that something was, but the Wanda who went in was an entirely different person from the one who came out. The fear had been wiped away from her features, instead replaced with a burning fury that far surpassed any similar feeling Iris had ever seen on the girl's face. Wanda flung a ball of red energy at a hovering robot without even looking at it. The robot seemed to be encased in the red glow and in the next moment, with a pulling motion, she took half of the robot and sent it flying into another one, causing them to fall into pieces. Wanda reached down, seeming to pull up more of the red energy from the earth, forming a large ball which she sent out, decimating the remaining robots while leaving Hawkeye and Iris completely unharmed.

Hawkeye and Wanda shared a look before nodding together. "Alright, we're all clear here," Hawkeye announced. Wanda walked over to Iris, offering a hand to help her up.

" _You look familiar_ ," she spoke in Sokovian, looking intently at Iris.

" _I've fought for a free Sokovia along with you,"_ Iris responded. " _No justice, no peace_."

" _No justice, no peace."_ Wanda repeated with an oddly sentimental smile.

Hawkeye spoke again, "We're coming to you, and I've got a present I think you'll really like." He glanced at Iris as he said the last part, and she frowned.

 _Present,_ she grumbled in her head. Before she could get out he rest of her complaint, she caught sight of a blue blur hurdling towards them. "Look out!" she cried throwing up an arm. The blur faltered to the side and then slowly, it slowed enough for Iris to recognize that it wasn't a robot or missile or any of the things Iris thought it could be—it was Pietro, Wanda's twin brother. Only, in the same way that the Wanda stepping out of the building had been "Wanda, but not," this Pietro was "Pietro, but not." Iris remembered him as a tall, thin and angry man with brown hair. This Pietro was still tall, but he was broader—clearly more muscular, and he had the beginnings of a beard—not the rugged hipster type found in Brooklyn, but the carelessly handsome type. He wore a tight grey and blue Underarmor-type shirt with black running pants. Gone was the somewhat ragged protest leader. In was the silver-haired and inhumanly fast Adonis. He looked at Iris with wide

"Who is this?" he asked in thickly accented English. " _Who are you?"_ he added in Sokovian, Iris opened her mouth to respond, but she was beaten to it.

"She's here to help," Hawkeye answered. "Which is more than I can say for you."

"What you think I'm not helping? I show you," Pietro said, sweeping up Wanda into his arms. In the next second he took off, throwing over his shoulder, "Keep up old man!"

Hawkeye let out a heavy sigh before lifting his bow, aiming an arrow at Pietro's back. Iris looked at him with mild alarm and took a step forward, lifting a hand so that she was ready to swipe the arrow out of the air. Hearing the step, Hawkeye turned to look at her. "It's…it's a joke," he mumbled before lowering his bow. She didn't say anything, letting silence drape itself around them. "This way," Hawkeye gestured with his head, and Iris trotted after him through the streets of her fallen city.

 _I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones_

 _Enough to make my system blow_

 _Welcome to the new age, to the new age_

It had taken her a long time to understand the winding streets of Novi Grad and the way that it was a city of interlocking circles instead of a grid like Manhattan. Now, as she jogged through the rubble and climbed over the police car barricades, it felt like an entirely different maze. Next to her, Hawkeye moved with a determined swiftness that spoke of years of training. He darted over the rubble like it was nothing. He hadn't wandered these streets and stopped in every shop to take three minutes to converse with the owner, slowly working his way in and learning the way a Sokovian accent felt on his lips and tongue. He didn't know how many years it took Magda to work up the money to buy her store that was now in ruins. He didn't know that Lazar had been passed down his house after six generations of Lazar's before him. He just saw it as debris to be avoided.

"You know, Sokovia's actually a beautiful place in the spring," Iris remarked. "The sky is usually blue and the weather's not too bad. Not as much rain as you'd expect." A lone robot flew above them and Hawkeye picked it off easily, watching as it fell to the ground a few yards ahead of them. "It's a great city to just wander around too—except for the occasional riots…and the constant military presence. But you usually kind of forget about that in the spring," she mentioned as she started to push aside pieces of buildings and trash with a flick of her hand.

"A real vacation spot, huh?" he grumbled, crunching a broken piece of glass.

"She is not wrong," a Sokovian accent spoke causing Hawkeye to spin around, bow at the ready and Iris to start. "The flowers are particularly nice in May." Iris turned to face Pietro. "You live in Sokovia?"

She nodded "For two years."

"But you are not Sokovian." It was a challenge more than a statement—his voice was too lighthearted for it to be anything other than a trap.

"I'm not American."

Hawkeye looked at her sideways. Her accent was dead on, sure, and maybe she was _technically_ American, but it was only through a technicality.

"Where _are_ you from?" Hawkeye asked.

"Does it matter?" Iris asked the question to Pietro, waiting for his response. He was the one with the problems with outsiders claiming his city.

"Not so much anymore," Pietro noted, looking around. He kicked the head of the robot so that it skittered off down the street. "As long as you are not metal." Iris let out an amused snort. Hawkeye didn't say anything—he was still looking at her as if waiting for an answer to his question. Iris let out a small yelp as she was scooped up into Pietro's arms. "And you're not," he remarked before he took off—Hawkeye shouting at their backs.

The wind was brutal. It stung her face and caused her dark hair to plaster itself to her face, blinding her and making it impossible to speak. The edge of her sweater, that wasn't held in place by his arms, fluttered rapidly in the high speeds. Her head was still spinning when he deposited at the entryway of a building. Staggering slightly, she put her hand against the door frame.

"No, I'm not," she panted out. The words had been trapped in her during the 30 second sprint and now came tumbling out on one breath. She turned to him, "I thought I—"

"We must get people to the Market," he interrupted. "You know the city. I go back for old man." Iris nodded, understanding. In this section of the city smoke had begun to flood the streets making it difficult to see—difficult to breathe. Anyone left in the area would feel trapped in their buildings. There was a crash from somewhere further down the street and Iris and Pietro looked at each other. He darted over to a windowsill where he plucked a flower from a pot before appearing by her side, holding it out to her. "Enjoy the flowers," he quipped before taking off and leaving her behind, tucking the flower into her ponytail.

 _I raise my flags, don my clothes_

 _It's a revolution, I suppose_

 _We're painted red to fit right in_

 _Whoa_

"This way! _Požuri_! Hurry! Follow me!" Iris shouted, herding people out of the buildings and down the smoke flooded streets. There had been more trapped inside—whether by fear or something else she wasn't sure—than Iris had expected. Now grandmothers hobbled quickly down the street, their sons and daughters gripping their elbow in support. Children clung onto their fathers or clutched their mothers' hands. It was oddly idyllic watching the families and friends support each other in the crisis.

" _Move along!"_ a police officer ordered, roughly pushing Iris further down the street. Iris flinched away from his touch, cursing under her breath. She allowed herself to be herded down the street along with the crowd.

The destruction on the streets was easier to deal with than the pain and confusion in the questions swirling around her.

 _"What are these things? What's happening?"_

 _"Are we going to die?"_

 _"Where is the Air Force?"_

 _"Where is my wife? Where is Maria?"_

It was slightly ironic—two years of trying to fit in and assimilate, and now that she had finally been accepted and treated as an equal, she was about to die. At least she would die with two people knowing her secret and a dissertation that's claims were proven to be well founded by the unfolding events of history. If she survived this, her dissertation would propel her into becoming a leading scholar in transnationalism in gateway countries. Unfortunately, she had a sinking feeling that she would die and the only record of her genius would remain forgotten on a shared Google Doc.

The robots seemed to have disappeared from the streets, leaving an unnerving stillness settled over the streets. Iris kept the people from entering the square. All of them stood in the side street, waiting in a precarious silence—the only sounds the shuffling of children and hushing of parents. A minute passed like this. And then two more. More people joined the crowd.

" _Are they gone?_ " a man asked, finally asking the question that was all on their minds..

" _Is it over?_ " a woman added on.

There was no answer. In a way that was the answer.

And then she heard it: a growing rumble coming from ahead of them. She saw heat waves rippling across the sky, and then, out of the clouds, a large, rectangular _spaceship_ emerged. She was flooded with hope and fear. The spaceship looked startlingly similar to the three that had been launched over Washington D.C. last year. They could only be from one entity…SHIELD, the terrorist organization and the last thing they needed. She watched as smaller spaceships made their way to the city, and before she could tell anyone to wait, the people around her began pushing, surging towards the airborne life rafts. She stood back, watching for a second more before she watched Captain America standing there and directing people, civilians into the boats and agents into the buildings to help the people. There was no real choice. She had to trust them.

 _"Here, allow me,"_ Iris' said in Sokovian as she watched an elderly man struggle through the rubble. She took his hand, walking him towards the boat as she subtly used the hand supporting his back to move the rocks and rubble from their path. She helped him step up into the waiting hands of an agent who moved him further into the ship. Another agent appeared offering a hand to Iris, and she shook her head moving back towards the building. An explosion went off somewhere in the city and she instinctively ducked, the people around her scattering in their search for cover. She felt a hand on her soldier, and Iris flinched away, stepping to the side to face whoever it was who had touched her. Pietro had returned.

"You are wanted elsewhere," Pietro stated before picking her up for the second time, spinning around, and taking off. This time she was prepared for the feeling of the wind, and instead of letting it have its way with her, she waved her hand, parting the wind around them so that they ran in a bubble. Still, he was moving so fast that she couldn't track their progress through the city. All of the buildings seemed to blur together so that when he finally stopped, it took her a minute to determine her surroundings—they were in an old church, and they weren't alone. Most of the Avengers gathered there as well, all circled around a large metal cylinder in the center of the room.

"Is this the present?" Captain America asked Hawkeye, looking Iris over as Pietro set her down gently. Pietro kept his hands on her waist, his fingers lightly brushing the bare skin between her low riding red shorts and slightly scrunched up white sweater. Once he was certain that Iris could stand on her own, he released her, sprinting to his sister's side.

"Something like that," Iris answered, pulling the edge of her sweater down to cover the skin.

"You're American," Captain America stated, surprise evident.

Iris wobbled her head from side to side. "Something like that," she repeated.

Before he had time to question further, a woman walked into the room. Her very presence seemed to demand the group's attention. Iris ran through the list of names in her head trying to place her. Black Widow. She was Black Widow. "What's the drill?"

"This is the drill," Iron Man gestured to a large metal cylinder in the middle of the room. "If Ultron gets a hand on the core we lose."

Iris had no time to ask any of the obvious questions. Instead, as the Hulk appeared, bashing a robot to the side, another, larger robot, twice the size of the other ones and made out of a sleek dark grey metal, hovered down a few yards away from the building and stood staring at them. This had to be Ultron, the one who had been in the news and whose voice had announced to the entire city that eventually they would fall to their deaths due to the folly of the Avengers.

"Is that the best you can do?" Thor baited. The Robot lifted his hand and out from all of the far corners of the city, robots came running and flying towards them. There was at least a hundred—probably more—all of them in varying states of repair and disrepair, but no less menacing.

"You had to ask," Captain America said flatly, shooting a dirty look at Thor. The god's response was lost as Ultron spoke.

"This is the best I can do," it—he?—stated in his deep partially robotic, partially human voice. "This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me." The robots converged around Ultron, waiting for his signal. "How can you possibly hope to stop me?" Ultron asked. The only answer to his question was chaos.

Robot minions scrambled up the sides of the church, coming through the walls and attacking the Avengers from all sides. The superheroes instantly fell into an odd sort of dance that's steps Iris did not know. Thor and Iron Man took to the skies in an air ballet as Pietro began to dance along the ground, occasionally using his speed to catapult him into the air, striking down the robots in his path before he landed back on earth. Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow had their own sort of minuet going on with the robots they engaged, switching from partner to partner as their targets fell. Meanwhile, Wanda waved her arms and swirled her hands in a kind of interpretive dance, alternating between firing off balls of energy and crashing robots into each other.

Iris stood still.

Despite what Hawkeye had said, she was no superhero. She couldn't dance. It wasn't her thing. "Present!" a voice shouted out and she swiveled around, coming face to face with a robot minion who fired a shot at her. Instinctively, she swiped her hand to the side, sending the blast spiraling into the back of the robot Black Widow was dancing with. Bringing her hands back around with a swoop, she tossed the robot up into the air where Thor swung his hammer, smashing it into pieces.

And then, she was in it. If the Avengers were the dancers, she was the conductor, working her way through her greatest symphony yet. She sent a robot into one of Wanda's, crashing them together like cymbals in midair. She sent another that had been advancing on Iron Man— _Iron Man_ —into the wall, letting it fall scraping down like a distorted slide whistle. Her hands moved in sharp staccato gestures sending robots shooting into the ground or colliding into their compatriots. When she brought a new section in to join the orchestra, she moved her arms in a sweeping gesture, causing robots to pile into one another, almost taking out Hawkeye who ducked at the last minute, allowing the Hulk to smash them to the ground. She shielded Captain America—who had tossed his shield to Black Widow to dance with—with a wall of wind until Hawkeye picked off the robots attacking him and Black Widow tossed the shield back. She was _excellent_. She was a _maestro_. She was shot in the arm.

Iris swore loudly, and then looking at the wound of charred skin, swore again. In a breath, Pietro was by her side, smashing through the robot. "You ok?" he hesitated, looking at her.

"Fine," she ground out before taking the pieces of the robot and sending them flying out to the room. Some of them hit their former compatriots—others knocked into the church's wall before falling down to the ground again. One hit the back of the Hulk's head, causing him to roar. Pietro nodded once before zooming away again to resume the fight. Iris gathered herself together and then returned herself, fighting until she had a hard time breathing and she had to focus more energy on drawing air into her longs rather than blasting robots apart. As she panted, she heard an odd noise overhead and looked up to notice the red, alien-looking Avenger for the first time. She had never seen him before—not during the Chitauri Invasion or any coverage of subsequent attacks—yet he functioned so well within the unit, she doubted he was another hidden gem of Sokovia like herself. The Red Avenger shot a beam of yellow light out of his forehead, and it knocked Ultron back through the wall, the Red Avenger following it along with Iron Man and Thor, the Hulk charging after them. To her left, a robot caught her attention, and she blasted it back, allowing Captain America to spin and decapitate it with his SHIELD. Then, the robots began to run away.

"They're trying to leave the city!" Thor boomed.

"We can't let them, not even one." The slight panic in Iron Man's voice was unsettling. Iris had only ever heard the grandiose, showmanship of Tony Stark and the bravado of Iron Man. This was the man who gave his home address to The Mandarin. His quick, clipped words cut through her, making her heart pound.

"We gotta move out, even I can tell the air is getting thin. You guys get to the boats, I'll sweep for stragglers. Be right behind you," Captain America ordered, his military coming out.

"What about the core?" Hawkeye asked, glancing at the cylindrical metal center that they'd been dancing around.

"I'll protect it," Wanda nodded.

Hawkeye looked up at her, and she looked back, her face full of resolve. "It's my job." There was a silent agreement.

"This way," Hawkeye gestured with his head to Iris and Black Widow.

 _I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus_

 _This is it, the apocalypse_

"So, you're a woman without a country," Black Widow commented, off-hand, almost too casually. "What brings you to Sokovia?"

"It's the flowers," Hawkeye threw out, and Black Widow let out a laugh. Iris let a smile cross her lips.

"I'm a doctoral candidate in sociocultural anthropology—I completed my fieldwork here and due to the rapidly changing nature of the country's political situation, I wrote my dissertation here too." It was the answer that she had been handing out to prospective employers for the past four months.

"But why Sokovia?" Hawkeye asked, taking a turn sharply, causing Iris' to fly into the side of the car.

"I'm interested in studying the effects of transnationalism as a byproduct of a country's geography, particularly in gateway countries. Sokovia was the natural choice," she answered, gripping the doorway. It was great interview practice. Waiting room nerves would be nothing compared to the knot forming in her stomach caused by fact that at any minute she could plummet from the sky or be shot to death by a killer robot.

"What's your dissertation on?" Black Widow looked at Iris through the rearview window.

"The fact that Sokovia's circumstances have basically made it a time bomb," Iris answered. "All it needed was one spark at just the right moment, and then this." Hawkeye and Black Widow shared a look as he pulled to a stop near one of the life spaceboats.

"Speaking of moments, we don't have a lot of time," Hawkeye remarked.

"So get your asses on a boat," Black Widow shrugged, running in the opposite direction.

"Is she...?" Iris stopped, cut off by a shake of Clint's head.

"Come on," he said, jogging with her to a boat. He helped her up onto it before stepping on himself.

Iris felt her body relax as she stood on the spaceboat—despite the fact that it belonged to SHIELD. She was too tired to care. And even if she did have the energy, she wasn't so sure she would care then either. The Avengers had proven themselves, and they obviously trusted SHIELD. Besides, even Wanda and Pietro were fighting alongside of the apparently corrupt agency. Iris dropped to the floor, leaning her head against the wall and taking in a breath. She was ready for today to be over. She was ready to fly out of here like a bat out of hell.

"Costel!" The frantic voice pierced through Iris' exhaustion. It was Zrinka. "We were in the market. _Costel_!" The young woman called again for her little brother. Zrinka had been caring for him since their parents died in a bombing a few years back. He was all she had left. Iris had had many conversations about it with Zrinka.

Iris sighed and pushed herself up from the ground, but before she could convince her muscles to move her out of the safety of the boat, Hawkeye was already gone, heading towards the market. He reached it, and she watched as he stretched his arms down, lifting up the little boy. Costel clung tightly to the hero, and Iris was about to let the feeling relief sink her back down to the ground when she heard it.

A rumbling, smaller than the ones the spaceship had caused but of the same variety, had started somewhere to the left. Iris turned to face the sound, brow furrowing as she looked off into space. Her expression slowly slipped into one of horror as the jet came into view, a robot sitting in the cockpit gunning down everything in its path. A police officer crumpled to the ground, and as Thor was thrown back, Captain America ducked underneath his shield. She watched as it continued on its path, drawing closer and closer to Hawkeye and Costel.

"No!" Zrinka shouted. Or maybe it was Iris. She couldn't tell because in the next moment she tore from the ship, her body screaming at her to give it a break as she pushed it to go faster, _faster_ to reach the pair. Her mind raced along with her—did she attempt to shield them or did she try to deflect the bullets? The bullets were going so fast, but she wasn't sure she could generate enough power with her shield to cause them to completely reverse direction and be blocked out; if even one go through that could be enough. The plane was almost upon them, and Iris, in a moment of absolute desperation, gave a great push of her arms, a scream wrenching itself from her body as she watched a blur shoot past the pair.

The plane continued on its journey.

The market's windows shattered from the hail of bullets pushed into it, glass showering down onto the backs of Hawkeye and a panting Pietro who had just pushed a car in front of the Avenger and boy. Pietro looked over his shoulder at Iris who stood in the middle of the square, faltering slightly. His stare was intense as he gazed into her eyes-whether he was trying to thank her or if he was just disbelieving that he was bullet free, Iris wasn't sure. She nodded at him, and he nodded back before zooming away and further into the city. Hawkeye ran towards her with Costel in his arms. He paused, reaching her. His gaze was less intense than Pietro's but it conveyed the same mixture of emotions—residual fear, gratitude, disbelief, relief.

"Thanks," he said simply before continuing on, and Iris turned slowly before following him back on.

Hawkeye deposited Costel into Zrinka's arms before laying down across three seats, Iris taking the wall to his left. A bluish blur materialized in front of them, Pietro putting Wanda back onto her feet.

"We're good to go!" an agent barked, and as the boat began to rise, the city began to fall—exploded into small meteors.

* * *

 **Ending Thoughts:** _Well, there you have it. An introduction to my new character and my slight diversion away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Considering how closely the rest of my story follows canon, I hope you'll stay with me—I'm not one to reverse major deaths, but honestly, no one in the Marvel Universe ever stays dead (I'm looking at you Captain America, Bucky, Coulson, Fury, and Loki), so is it so hard to believe that Pietro may have lived? Anyway, please, please, please review. What are your initial thoughts of Iris? What do you think of the changes in Clint (if you read Parting Shot)? Hopes and dreams for the story?_


	2. Not Today

**Not Today**

 **(Chapter 2 | Series Installment 2)**

 **Author's Note** :: _So,. I accidentally posted a draft of last chapter as opposed to the final edition. I realized my mistake when working on this one and posted the polished version on 10/15/16. There isn't too much that's changed except for fixing continuity errors and cleaning up the language. You'll catch the small changes as we go on, I bet. Also to answer a few reviews, Molly will be entering the sequel sphere and getting her own story which will be released at a strategic moment so it follows the same timeline as this story. So, yes, there is most DEFINITELY more Molly to come._

* * *

 _I don't know why, I just feel I'm better off,_

 _Staying in the same room I was born in,_

 _I look outside, and see a whole world better off,_

 _Without me in it trying to transform it,_

The spaceboat shuddered as it docked in the larger spaceship, heavy-sounding clicks securing it into place. The minute the engines were off, agents flooded the boat. Some—too many—carried stretchers between them, awkwardly navigating their way through the crowd and the seats to reach the wounded civilians and agents who lay on the floor or slumped against the wall. A group surrounded Hawkeye to her left even as he waved them off.

"Agent Barton, your shoulder," one of them stated lowly, and Iris craned her neck from where she was seated to see what they were talking about. She hadn't noticed why he was lying on his side when he got on and somehow in the heat of the moment, she had completely missed it. A large piece of glass from the Market's window protruded from Clint's shoulder. A wave of guilt washed over Iris. That was there because of her. If she had just shielded him or blown the bullets back up or done something _different,_ he would be fine.

"Just pull it out and save the stretcher for someone else; I can still walk," Hawkeye brushed off. She couldn't tell if he was being obstinate or noble. It seemed like the agents couldn't either.

"You've already played hero," one of them stated and Iris watched as they rolled him over more, gingerly taking the glass between their gloved fingers. She winced as they plucked the shard out, 1/3 of it coated in red.

"If you are not severely injured, please make your way to the closest exit and wait for the next available agent to help you," an agent announced over the chaos.

" _Ako niste ozbiljno povređen, molim da svoj put do najbliže izlazu i čekati do sledećeg slobodnog agenta da vam pomogne_ ," another voice translated.

Her view to Hawkeye now cut off, Iris turned to look for Pietro or Wanda, but they were both gone. Pietro must have slipped them out as soon as the ship landed. Iris sighed and then stood up slowly, sliding her back up the wall to support herself. She stood for a second more before she pushed herself away, walking off of the boat to join the rest of the crowd.

Everywhere she turned there seemed to be a group of people being assessed and spoken to by agents, robotic voices translating frantic questions into more measured tones. It had all of the organized chaos of an airport with the added frenzy of people who had minutes ago been running and hiding and fighting for their life against crazed robots. As such, there seemed to be no available agents—a fact that Iris didn't mind all that much. Instead, she let her feet continue to walk her forward, heading further into the ship without much of a clue as to where she was going.

"Ma'am, excuse me. Ma'am!"

Iris didn't realize the voice was calling after her until she felt the hand wrap around her arm, pulling her around. Iris hissed, yanking her arm away from the agent's grasp. She rotated her arm slightly to look at the injury—the burnt loose threads of her cut sweater and the red and black skin where the robot's blast had hit her. It looked worse now than it had when she'd just gotten hit, and it was beginning to throb.

"Shit, I'm sorry," the woman mumbled, her eyes on Iris' arm. "Do you speak English?" A robotic voice repeated the question in Sokovian. Iris looked down at the rectangular device hanging around the agent's neck. It looked like the kind of microphone her professors used in lectures.

"Yes," Iris breathed, nodding her head. The agent hit a button on the device, cutting it off mid-way through its repetition of Iris' answer.

"What's your name?"

"Iris Tate."

The agent tapped at the screen of the tablet she was carrying. "Ok, Ms. Tate and are you looking for anyone?" the agent asked. Iris' brow wrinkled for a second before it hit her why this was even a question. People had been living their lives when the attack hit. Mothers had run out for a quick errand. Parents were at work. She could only imagine the fear of the people wandering around, looking for their kids—for their families. Some of them wouldn't be reunited.

"No, no. I'm an anthropologist—I don't have any family here."

"Ok," the agent nodded. Her shoulders seemed to relax a little. "And how old are you, Ms. Tate?"

"I'm twenty-six."

"And you said you're an anthropologist? Where are you from, then?"

"Well, I'm almost an anthropologist. I'm finishing my last year at Columbia—it's in New York City," she added. The agent just nodded and was kind enough to not point out that she was American (if her accent was any indicator) and familiar with Columbia.

"And do you have a residence in New York?"

"My friend's subletting my old apartment—I'm sure she wouldn't mind if I stay with her for a few extra weeks." Iris had been about to return home anyway to defend her dissertation and then—if all went well—graduate. At least her defense should be a breeze now. _See what I predicted? It happened. Doctorate, please._

"Ok, Ms. Tate," a small medical bracelet printed out of the top of the agent's tablet device. "If you could put this on and report to one of the Nursing Stations along the perimeter of this room, they'll see to your arm."

Iris nodded, taking the bracelet and fastening it onto her arm. The agent gave a brief smile before walking away to find someone else to help. Iris scanned the room, looking for the Nursing Stations. As the agent had said, along the edge of the room were several small tables set up with groups of people bustling around them. Picking one, Iris weaved through the crowd, joining the line of patients waiting to be seen. One person seemed to have a broken arm, another couldn't put any pressure on his foot and was being supported by a girl slightly too short to be any real help. Another man had scratches and cuts all up and down his body. A child's eyes were squinted shut. Had she been in an emergency room, the line would have taken an hour to get through. As it was, she was helped within four minutes of joining the queue.

"Bracelet, please," the nurse ordered, his translation device echoing him. Iris held her wrist out for the nurse to scan with his tablet. He glanced over the screen. "Good, you speak English." Unlike the agent, he didn't bother turning off the device, and it continued to needlessly translate his words. "Can I see your arm?"

Iris turned her arm and the nurse gently moved her so that her arm faced him and the rest of her body faced the wall. . She kept her eyes on him, though, watching as he pursed his lips and typed notes onto the screen, occasionally glancing up at her injury. "On a scale of 1-10, how bad is the pain?" he asked.

"Six?" Iris guessed. She hated when people asked her to rate her pain on a scale. It was all so subjective. Her six could be someone else's ten, or Hawkeye's three. How was a one-time rating supposed to give them any information without some context of what else she found painful.

"And what kind of pain is it? Stinging? Constriction? Aching? Throbbing? Burning?"

"I would say about 65% throbbing and 35% burning," Iris said, looking at her arm. "Is this going to scar?"

The paramedic shook his head. "I wouldn't worry about it." He retreated back to the small table, rifling through an intense looking medical kit before coming back with a small tube of ointment and a bandage. "This should heal it up within three to five days. Just make sure you apply it and change the bandage three times a day—after every meal," he instructed, dabbing some on with a cotton ball. The cool gel immediately soothed the skin, and while she could feel it covering up the burn mark, it didn't make her skin feel sticky or tight. This was the kind of stuff her student medical insurance would never cover. He finished by putting a large bandage over the wound. "Ok, Ms. Tate, if you would go over to the waiting area, we'll be returning you home sometime in the next few hours."

"Tate—is that your name?" a voice asked. Iris turned around to face Captain America who had made his way down into the landing bay.

"Well, it's definitely not Present," she remarked with half a smile.

"Captain," the nurse nodded, and Captain America nodded back before starting to walk Iris over to the waiting area.

"My name is Iris," she corrected. "Tate's my last name."

"Steve," Captain America said. "You know, you put up a hell of a fight back there, Iris." His would were well measured—each carefully chosen and put forward with the slightest hesitancy.

"I'm not a hero," Iris stopped him. She could see from the way his face slipped into a look of shock before he pulled it back together into Captain's resolve. The temptation to laugh was almost too great for her.

"Why not?"

She was surprised that he didn't continue with an assault of compliments and encouragements and well thought out arguments about why she _was_ , in fact, a hero. "I'm just not Avengers material—trust me."

"What if you're wrong?" Steve pressed, gently.

"I'm not," Iris shrugged.

"You never know unless you put it to the test. What if today was just a small piece of what you're capable of?"

"Look, I'm just not one of those girls who always dreamed of being President or Captain America's sidekick. Sorry," Iris retorted. There was no real heat behind her words, but the look of shock reappeared on Steve's face. Iris quickly reviewed what could have caused its reemergence and it was only a matter of seconds before it hit her. "And _you're_ Captain America which makes _me_ a total bitch."

"Better be careful with a mouth like that or Gramps will make you wash it out with soap," Tony Stark appeared laying a hand on Steve's shoulder.

"Can we just let that go?" The shock and slight hurt on Steve's face had transformed into a look of pure annoyance.

"Don't think so, Spangles," Tony Stark patted Steve's shoulder before moving next to him to face off against Iris. "So, I take it you're out? Not a team player? I get that."

"No, it's not that," Iris shook her head.

"Then what's the hold up?"

Iris took a breath in a small attempt to calm herself down. They didn't know her. They had just met her. Of course they wanted her on their team. That was logical. That made sense. If they had all the facts, they wouldn't want her on their team. Unfortunately, she couldn't divulge the long list of reasons why it was a _terrible_ idea to have Iris as a permanent fixture of the Avengers, but if she could, they'd let her go. Maybe just one would be enough. "I just put eight years of my life into becoming an anthropologist. Considering I basically predicted the shit show that just went down, I'm a damn good one too. I'd rather be a good anthropologist than a mediocre Avenger, and I think you'd rather that too."

"Maybe," Tony Stark shrugged. "Maybe not. But if that's the case, I just have one question."

"What?" Iris sighed. She didn't want to hear the question. She wanted to sit back down. She wanted to go to sleep. She wanted to forget today ever happened and pretend that Sokovia hadn't been blasted out of the sky.

"Why step up?"

"What?" Iris repeated, squinting her eyes as if attempting to see the question hanging in the air between them.

"You could have stayed inside or laid low along with the other citizens, but you stepped up. You came and you helped us take Ultron down. Why do that if you don't have the slightest interest in being an Avenger?"

"Because there's a difference between stepping up and being on call," Iris returned coolly. Both Steve and Tony stared at her hard for a second.

"She's smart. I like her," Tony said looking at Steve.

"I understand." Steve's eyes were on Iris'.

She snorted and shook her head. "Do you? Because it seems like you live for this sort of stuff."

"Maybe today," Steve admitted. "But somedays I just want to go home to Brooklyn and leave it all behind. We all do."

"Not Brooklyn. Malibu. Maybe Vermont in the winter. I have a feeling Pepper would just _love_ skiing," Tony quipped.

"Promise you'll think about it," Steve urged. "Because you could do a lot of good."

Irish sighed. "I will." She already knew what her answer would be, but she could make this one concession to get them to leave her alone. Steve nodded and Tony Stark opened his mouth to say something. Before he could get anything out, Iris turned around abruptly and made her way back into the crowd. She could feel their eyes on her back as she weaved through the people searching for a familiar face to distract her from what she'd just done.

 _You are out of my mind, you aren't seeing my side,_

 _You waste all this time trying to get to me,_

 _But you are out of my mind_

* * *

 **Ending Thoughts:** _Wow this was surprisingly difficult to write, and I'm still not sure I got this right. Rather than obsessing over it, I figured I'd put it up and we'd all move on. So, let me know—still interested in coming along with me? (P.S. Title and quotes from Twenty One Pilots' song "Not Today")_


	3. New Offer

**New Offer**

 **(Chapter 3 | Series Installment 4)**

 **Author's Note** :: _I'm loving everyone's support in the reviews, thank you, thank you. I thrive on constant affirmation ;) Also, admittedly this is a bit of a slow burn at the beginning. BUT there are great moments which will make the slow burn and build worth it. Also the second half of the story will he really fast paced and awesome._

* * *

 _Your masquerade_

 _I don't wanna be a part of your parade_

 _Everyone deserves a chance to_

 _Walk with everyone else_

In the two weeks after returning home, Iris had been interviewed by a total of eleven news outlets ranging from NBC to the New York Times to BuzzFeed. Her friend had graciously allowed her to come back to her apartment early and sleep on the couch, and she hadn't even complained about Iris' odd sleep schedule considering Iris was operating seven hours ahead of New York time. Iris had FaceTimed with her parents once a day for the first week, and after assuring that she was indeed ok and did not need to be whisked back home, they had promptly returned to the bi-weekly contact schedule. Not only that, but she successfully defended her dissertation and somehow made it up the stage to shake hands with people she would be happy to never see again.

And now she was done. Most of her cohort had gone off with their parents to celebrate elsewhere in the city, leaving her alone with the two other international students whose parents had been unable to get away from work, and the orphan prodigy who liked to latch onto groups despite the fact that talking to people was _not_ her strong suit—and that was coming from the girl who'd been homeschooled in relative isolation for the first 16 years of her life.

"Are you going to Flûte tonight with Katy? I heard her dad's taking care of the tab," Manny posed.

"I promised Deandra I'd go to Brooklyn with her," Jiashan shook her head.

"Where to?" Iris asked.

Jiashan shrugged. "Her pick."

"Living dangerously then," Iris teased.

"What about you Iris?" Manny asked

"Not to get in the way of a night of heavy drinking, but Iris has plans actually," a voice spoke up, and Iris turned to face the man who was threatening to ruin her night of champagne and moderate debauchery. Her eyebrows shot to the top of her forehead as she stared at Tony Stark wearing a slate grey suit and red lensed sunglasses. "I like your hat," he nodded to her. "Very…puffy."

"I like your sunglasses," Iris shot back. "Very…pointless."

He smiled, taking off the sunglasses and point them at her. "You haven't returned any of my calls. I'm starting to think you're avoiding me."

Iris shrugged. She had begun dodging Tony Stark's phone calls last week as he continued to try to convince her to become an Avenger. It wasn't as if she needed more time to think about the offer. She had thought about it. She had weighed every possible outcome and its possibility. She had discussed it at length with her parents twice, and although they were slightly more open to the idea than she was, they had together agreed that she could make more of a difference in the world doing another job.

"My answer hasn't changed," Iris crossed her arms, her sleeves billowing and making the gesture a lot more comical than she would have liked.

"The offer has." His statement stopped Iris' carefully crafted veiled speech. "Walk with me," he gestured with his head before heading a short distance off. Iris turned back to her friends. "I'll meet up with you later tonight, wherever you are. Just keep me updated."

"Wait, you know Tony Stark?" Manny asked.

"Perk of almost being killed by a robot," Iris lifted a hand to wave goodbye before following Tony as he weaved through the crowd. The crowd for its part did not seem to recognize him and as a result, their moving was slow—a fact he continued to complain about. Eventually, they emerged by a street side and stood next to a dark car. "After you," he gestured into the car, holding the door open for her.

"My mother always told me not to get into cars with strange men," Iris quipped.

"I've got candy," Stark returned.

"Well, in that case…" Iris climbed in, sliding to the middle of the seat to sit across from Tony Stark.

"I forgot how long graduation ceremonies are. Is it really necessary for all of you to walk across the stage?"

"You said the offer's changed?" Iris asked, bringing him back to the subject. It wasn't that she wanted to be rude or chase him away. Honestly, having Tony Stark leave her a series of voicemails was one of the more exciting things happening in her world right now. But as much as she loved the game of it all, to some extent playing with the Avengers was playing with fire. And the old cliché existed for a reason.

"You don't want to be an Avenger," Stark stated.

"No," she shook her head, and then remembering her hat, she reached up, unpinning it from her hair and putting it in her lap.

"You want to be an anthropologist."

"It would be nice," she shrugged. Stark offered a smile.

"We could use an anthropologist on the team."

She paused. This was…unexpected.

"The Avengers need an anthropologist," she said flatly.

"Now that we're a global sensation," Stark inclined his head towards her.

Iris couldn't think of anything else to do except continue to stare. She didn't know where to even begin. She had played the wrong card, and he had called her bluff. Not that it was really a bluff—she honestly did want to be an anthropologist more than an Avenger—but to say that was her main reason for turning down an affiliation with the superheroes, that was a bit of a lie, and not one she particularly wanted to talk her way out of.

"So?" Stark prompted.

"No," she answered, slowly.

"No?" he repeated, surprised.

"No." She said the word more firmly this time. "I don't think this is a legitimate offer."

"Explain," he said, simply. His lack of response was a surprise.

"I think we're both smart enough to see that you're just recruiting me to the Avengers without the actual title of Avenger." Iris leveled a look at him.

"Not really an Avenger without the title—"

"I'm not in the business of entertainment; I'm not going to humor you," Iris cut across him.

"Look, do we want you close to the team? Yes. Are we willing to be somewhat flexible about the nature of your involvement? Sure. The way I see it, you can either join up and work to creating something bigger than yourself—while getting paid good money to do so," he quickly spoke over her as she opened her mouth to object that being an anthropologist was working to create something bigger than herself. "If having you close means you see more opportunities to step up," he placed the phrase in air quotes "so be it. You're an Avenger without the publicity that normally accompanies the job—a once in a lifetime offer."

"It's not about avoiding the publicity," Iris opposed.

"Then what is it? The responsibility? Do you have a heart condition or something?"

"I don't want to fight crime for a living. I don't want to be a savior out their rescuing the world. I don't care if that makes me a bad person, but that's not what I want."

He paused, scrutinizing her for the first time. "You want to study people. Watch them burn and figure out why."

"Do you want me to say no?" Iris asked, hotly.

"Is that what you really want?" Tony asked.

"Right now? I want to be left the hell alone," Iris looked out the car window to track where they were driving. They were in Midtown, passing by the Tavern on the Green.

"If that's true, why did you get in the car?"

"I heard there was candy," Iris remarked, looking back at him. He let out a short laugh.

"You thought I was going to offer you something you wanted. What do you want?"

"I want to get out." Iris tapped on the glass behind her. "Can you pull over here?"

"Keep driving," Tony ordered over top of her, and the car continued making its way to wherever it was he was taking her.

"You're abducting me," she charged.

"If anything it would be kidnapping," Tony Stark waved a hand. "But what do you want?"

"I want to go off and work in the field somewhere."

"And you're set on that?" Tony Stark asked.

"Why am I so valuable to you that you want to bend over backwards to get me on your side? When it comes down to it, I'm the same as that twenty something girl on the street," she remarked pointing out the window to a girl dressed in an outfit Iris recognized as entirely from Urban Outfitters. "The only difference about me is that I'm probably more of a bitch than she is and I can control the wind sometimes in very specific ways."

"Well, now we have to have you," Stark commented. "Look, the way you destroyed those robots—imagine how much you could do if you received training."

"Can I get out yet?" Iris asked, and Stark checked out the window.

"Yes," he consented as the car rolled to a stop. Iris climbed out of it and found herself in an underground parking garage. "If you're about to put my powers to the test…"

"Relax, Sky Dancer. We're going upstairs," Tony Stark said, shutting the car door behind him and leading the way to the elevator.

"Sky Dancer?" Iris repeated, following him inside.

"You know that toy doll that had wings for arms. Shot it up in the air?" Tony asked, pressing a button and the two began to rise.

"I can't fly," Iris remarked.

He shrugged. "Details."

The elevator slowed and the doors opened to a clean looking office space. Windows stretched from ceiling to floor and all of the furniture seemed to be square in shape and colored in soft shades of blue and grey.

"Mr. Stark," a woman greeted the pair as they got off the elevator. "Ms. Potts, is ready for you."

"Thank you, Bambi," Stark said, pushing into a room that's walls were made of frosted glass.

"You're late." The woman inside the room wore a sleek grey dress and had her hair tightly wound to the top of her head. Her arms were crossed as she stood in front of her desk.

"Garcetti ran long," Stark remarked moving to stand by her side. "Remind me to send him a snappy email later."

"Hmm," the woman sounded unimpressed, but her disapproving frown melted into a s mile, and she leaned up to kiss him. "This is the interview?"

"The interview?" Iris repeated, alarmed.

"She didn't agree," her face now matched her reproachful voice as she eyed down Tony Stark.

"She got in the car. Back me up on this, did you or did you not get in the car of your own volition?" he appealed to Iris.

"You're begging me to become an Avenger and now you're trying to force me to interview for a job I don't want?"

"This isn't an interview for the Avengers," Stark clarified. "You already did that one. Passed with flying colors."

"Then what is this?" Iris asked, looking around the room for any sort of sign.

"This," the woman spoke, "is an interview to become Stark Industries' in-house cultural anthropologist."

"And look," Tony Stark picked up a mint from a dish on Pepper's desk and tossed it to Iris. "Candy."

 _And we can whisper things_

 _Secrets from my American dreams_

 _Baby needs some protection_

 _But I'm a kid like everyone else_

* * *

 **Ending Thoughts:** _I am excited for the next chapter. Still a bit of a slow build, but we may see some familiar faces again. Stick with me! The best is yet to come_ _J_ _Also song is "Hero" from Family of the Year._


	4. Full of It

**Full of It**

 **(Chapter 4)**

 **Author's Note** :: _Here comes a familiar face. Or two._

 _Hey, I am the truth_

 _Hey, I am the wisdom of the fallen - I'm the youth_

 _Hey, I am the greatest_

 _Hey, this is the proof_

 _Hey, I work hard, pray hard, pay dues, hey_

Iris wasn't sure what Pepper Potts whispered into Tony Stark's ear, but she was tempted to accept the job just to find out. Because whatever it was, it was powerful enough to encourage Stark to beeline out of the room without another word to either of the women when just thirty seconds earlier he had been furiously attempting to both explain the job to Iris and convince Pepper Potts to let him stay and help with the interview.

So, at the present, Iris stood alone with Pepper Potts in the modern office, about to interview for a job that she wasn't sure she wanted. "Have a seat," Ms. Potts gestured to the square white chair in front of her sleek black desk. Iris lowered herself into it, perching on the edge of the seat. The other woman sank into her tall backed office chair with a sophisticated grace that matched Iris' but exceeded it in how relaxed she obviously was in this position, as if she had been born to do this.

"I apologize for the unusual start, but I'd be lying if I said that this is completely out of the normal for him," she commented, clicking a few things onto the computer. She paused before turning to Iris. "My name is Pepper; it's nice to meet you, Iris."

"Nice to meet you," Iris offered a smile. "Speaking of the unusual, are you typically directly involved in the interview process?"

Pepper shook her head. "Not typically, but as this is a new endeavor, and you will be working directly with me and an outside firm, Tony suggested that I do the honors myself."

"And, not to take over the interview, but just how involved in this interview is Mr. Stark?"

At this the CEO cracked a smile. "I would be lying if I said he's not a large part of the reason you're in that chair. He did pitch the idea of an in-house cultural anthropologist, but I only agreed because we could use someone with your skillset at Stark Industries."

Iris nodded, attempting to sift through all of her thoughts in the span of fifteen seconds. Did she call this out as an obvious ploy to get her to become an Avenger? Did she throw it in Tony Stark's face by never stepping up to join the team but remaining in close proximity until he inevitably got himself killed? That was harsh. Still. Did she continue the path her parents had put her on to get out there into the field and use her degree the way she always said she would? Did she get out of this chair or did she stay seated?

"I don't have my resume on me," Iris stated probably less apologetically than she should have.

"I have your LinkedIn," Pepper shook her head as she typed into the computer, presumably pulling up Iris's page. Iris unzipped her gown and shrugged it off revealing a gold sheath dress. Pepper turned to face Iris as the graduate folded her gown and lay it in her lap. "Why don't you start by telling me a little about yourself?"

She had practiced this spiel for months. She could say it in her sleep. According to Katy, she had.

"I've had a fascination with people since I was six years old, and I've been unofficially studying them since I was thirteen. Because of that I have connections to about thirty-nine countries spanning just about every continent. I'm fluent in six different languages, proficient in six more, because if you want to get to know people you need to understand their stories in their language.

"Focusing more on who _I_ am as a person, I've been described as candid by those who like me and blunt by those who don't. Really, I'm a low self-monitor which means I don't change who I am depending on my audience; I'm the same person sitting here in front of you as I will be with my friends at the bar later tonight.

"I am the best in my class because I am competitive by nature. That means I don't stop until my goal's achieved and if that means pushing my team to the top, then that's what I'll do because I'm not the sort of person to leave someone behind," she stopped the spiel, looking at Pepper who had the passive face of someone overwhelmed by information but was too put together to show it. Sensing that Iris wasn't going to start off again, the interviewer nodded, her fingers which had slowed their typing over the course of Iris' speech once again picked up speed as if they were simply on a delayed timer.

"Thank you," Pepper said, before she started scrolling on the computer, no doubt perusing Iris' page. "It looks like most of your experience is with research projects centering around social issues. How do you feel about transitioning from this to consumer research in a corporate setting?"

"I started just wanting to understand people, trying to figure out: what makes a person tick? What are we working towards in life? Then I started looking into communities. How are relationships formed? What makes a community distinct? What makes someone blend in or be accepted into a group? And I kept going after these questions until I ran into new ones with transnationalism and how geographical and sociopolitical circumstances came into play. I've looked into those questions and now I have new ones. I want to study transnationalism from inside a multinational company. It's a good opportunity for me to get more answers and more questions, and it's a good opportunity for you to better understand your consumers and employees and partners."

Pepper paused and looked over at Iris. "You really didn't know you'd be interviewing today?"

"No," Iris shook her head once.

"And, I hope you don't mind me asking, but have you been preparing to apply to other companies?"

"No," Iris repeated. "I'm just very good at talking and persuading people to listen."

Pepper nodded again. "You weren't ever considering becoming a corporate anthropologist, were you?"

The question struck Iris. Maybe she was good at talking, but Pepper was incredible at listening.

"It's not what I intended to use my anthropology degree for," Iris admitted, smoothing her doctoral gown which rested in her lap.

"Hm," Pepper murmured as if that's what she had suspected. "Why stay and interview then?"

"Because I'm not one to ignore opportunities," Iris answered, evenly. "I consider everything that comes my way. So it may not have been part of my original plan, the experience here could help me with my future goals."

"And it has nothing to do with him?" Ms. Potts gestured to the door with her head.

"If anything, my interest is in spite of him," Iris said, eyeing the door warily.

"Well, I know we're two questions in, but I've heard enough. If you want it, the job is yours. But," she continued as Iris opened her mouth to speak. "I want you to take a couple of days before you respond—even if right now you're tempted to accept."

"Is this about me or him?" Iris quirked an eyebrow.

Pepper smiled. "Maybe a little of both."

 _Uh-oh, running out of breath, but I_

 _Oh, I, I got stamina_

 _Uh-oh, running now, I close my eyes_

 _Well, oh, I got stamina_

 _And uh-oh, I see another mountain to climb_

 _But I, I, I got stamina_

Her answer hadn't changed.

She took the two days. She went to Flûte where she relived the entire interview for her friends. All of them demanded she take the job since they'd need a friend to bankroll them for their foreseeable future, and as Katy put it, "Better you sell out that me."

Then she had Skyped with her parents. She'd never seen her father more excited. " _Dies ist der perfekte Sprungbrett_ ," he'd declared. The perfect stepping stone, even though it differed from their original plan.

Her mother had been slightly more hesitant about the job. " _Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen."_

This had of course prompted an argument between her parents. Her father was adamant that Iris would have more success by taking this job first, while her mother continued to insist that it made more sense for Iris to jump right into what she wanted to be doing rather than take the circuitous route. In the end, her parents confirmed the decision that Iris had already made.

She took the job.

It only took a couple of days to get the proper paperwork filed with HR and to fully move into her office, learning the names of just about everyone on the floor. Then of course was the debriefing on just why exactly Pepper had been convinced to hire an anthropologist in the first place. To put it bluntly, Stark Industries was in deep shit. Sure, they were doing ok, but there was no denying that overall their stocks and profit margins were declining. It wasn't hard to imagine what had precipitated this trend, but Pepper wanted to know what exactly about the Ultron incident had affected Stark Industries and what could possibly be done to come back from this.

So, Iris had spent her first few weeks at Stark Industries working twelve hour workdays and discovering just how comfortable her office's chairs were due to her firm "Don't take work home" policy.

"You know, there are empty rooms upstairs," Pepper said, placing a coffee in front of Iris who jolted awake. "Since you refuse to go home."

"Aren't you supposed to be in LA?" Iris yawned, wrapping a hand around the coffee cup. Pepper remained silent. "Besides, it's not as much a refusal as a recurring accident. I don't like to leave until the work's done—"

"And the work's never done," Pepper finished. It was something Iris had said before. Multiple times. "Which is coincidentally why I am not back in LA. They have things under control over there. We…don't. Besides, we have the meeting with The Hermes Group at ten. I assume that's why you slept over last night?" Iris looked in front of her at the papers on her desk. The compilation of all of the work she had done just to be ready to meet with the marketing firm.

Iris nodded, yawning again before stifling it with her coffee cup. She placed the mug down on the table and then reached into her bag, pulling out an lavender tank top and pair of slate grey slacks.

"Is it really an accident if you bring your own clothes?" Pepper asked as Iris stood from the chair stretching a little bit.

Iris looked at her with a smile. "Maybe a room's not a half bad idea."

 _I transform with pressure, I'm hands-on with effort_

 _I fell twice before my bounce back was special_

 _Letdowns will get you, and the critics will test you_

 _But the strong will survive, another scar may bless you, ah_

By the time 9:57 rolled around, Iris felt sufficiently human. She wasn't sure if it was the fresh pair of clothes, the three additional cups of coffee, or the power nap in her new "Work Bedroom," but according to Pepper she looked "decent" and that was about as much as she could hope for. The two women sat at the circular table in the small conference room, sitting in silence as they waited for the envoys from The Hermes Group to arrive.

Bambi knocked on the door before sliding it open. "The people from The Hermes Group are here," she announced.

"You can send them in," Pepper instructed, and Bambi disappeared, two new figures taking her place. One was a tall, broad, dark skinned man. He had a round face with large features and close cropped dark hair. He carried himself with a surprising amount of grace for someone of his size. If she had to guess, he was the gentle giant sort. The second person was his complete opposite. She was petite and pale, her wavy golden hair cut into a bob. She seemed to bounce as she walked into the room behind the man, her brown eyes darting around the surroundings, taking everything in.

"You must be Mr. Hinson," Pepper greeted, standing up from her seat, and Iris followed suit.

"Marcus, please," the man corrected, reaching forward and shaking Pepper's outstretched hand and then moving on to shake Iris' hand. "And this is Saoirse Nolan, our marketing communications specialist."

"Pleasure to meet you," Saoirse shook Pepper's outstretched hand. "Again." For the briefest of seconds, Pepper's face went blank for a second.

"I'm sorry—"

"It was a while ago," Saoirse cut the apology off. "Three years, actually. At the Meeting of Minds Gala."

Pepper shook her head, keeping on a forced apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, I really don't remember."

"I didn't really expect you would. It was more a fun fact than anything else. I was just there with the cupcakes."

"Monarch Bakery?" Pepper's eyes lit up at the words.

"Yeah," a look of incredulous surprise swept over Saoirse's face.

"You were there with Molly, right? Molly McKay?" Pepper asked.

"Yeah," Saoirse was now fully smiling as she nodded her head. "It was me and Molly that night. She went alone to your party, and then, well, you know, you were there." Iris turned to look at Pepper, her head tilted in a question. Pepper either didn't notice or ignored the gesture and kept her eyes focused on Saoirse. The previous look of excitement had drained from her face, and her brow furrowed in concern.

"How is Molly?" Pepper's voice came out soft.

"She's ok," Saoirse didn't falter in the slightest. "Took some time off, but she's been back to making cupcakes again. I say that like it's a recent thing, but pretty much she got out of the hospital, took a month, and then got right back to work. But that's Molly for you," Saoirse shrugged.

Marcus coughed. He looked every bit as politely confused as Iris felt. Pepper's eyes widened as she seemed to come to herself and looked between Iris and Marcus. "I'm sorry, this is Iris Tate, our in-house cultural anthropologist."

"Nice to meet you," Iris shook hands with Marcus and Saoirse.

"In house anthro—so you came prepared," Saoirse remarked, sitting down at the table.

Pepper smiled and nodded as she and the rest of the group followed suit, sitting down.

"So, I know we spoke briefly before, but I wanted to make sure we're all working on the same page. What exactly are you looking for from The Hermes Group?" Marcus asked, taking the reins presumably before Saoirse could commandeer the conversation again.

"Stark Industries is currently experiencing a loss in revenue and—I'm assuming here, I'll need Iris to confirm—a loss of public favor." She looked to Iris who nodded. "I am hoping that Iris has discovered why, and I'm hoping that you can help me regain what we've lost." Marcus nodded jotting down some notes.

"Perhaps it would be best to hear what Iris has found first then. After that, we can a plan of attack so to speak," Marcus proposed. Saoirse shot him a look as if unimpressed by his formality. She locked eyes with Iris and then rolled her eyes as if they were school girls making fun of a know-it-all classmate. Iris gave a slight shrug.

"Well," Iris looked at her papers and shuffled them. "All of my research comes down to one basic sentiment." She looked at Pepper. "The public thinks Stark Industries is full of shit."

She could have laughed at how Marcus' face went from slight shock to being carefully blank. Saoirse, on the other hand, looked _cheerful._ "Finally, a bad bitch who tells it like it is," Saoirse leaned back in her chair. "Just how deep shit is this?"

"Look at it this way. Pepper, when people say Stark Industries, what do you want them to think?"

"Protection," Pepper said, automatically. It looked as if she had mostly recovered from the turn the conversation had taken unlike Marcus who had probably never been to a first meeting which began with "catch up" and then quickly devolved into swear words. Then again, if he was frequently paired with Saoirse, Iris wouldn't be surprised if this happened more often than not. "We want them to think about how we work to keep them protected with our privatized security branch and how we are working to keep the earth safe with sustainable energy."

"And Saoirse, when I say Stark Industries, what is the first thing you think of?"

"Tony Stark," Saoirse answered with a shrug.

"Marcus?" Iris turned to him.

"The same," he agreed.

"And Saoirse, after you think of Tony Stark, what do you think of?"

"The Avengers."

"And then?"

"Ultron," Saoirse said, slowly.

"Ultron, right. And who is responsible for creating Ultron and driving him to destroying the city of Sokovia? That is, according to Ultron."

"The Avengers." Saoirse answered at the same time Pepper responded with "Tony," in a resigned voice.

"So at this present moment, how do you feel about Tony Stark?" Iris asked.

"He's kind of the shit," Saoirse answered. "He's an Avenger, you know? He's here to help keep the Earth safe."

"But do you trust him?"

She didn't respond right away. Instead, Marcus answered. "No."

"So how do you feel about a company with Tony Stark's name on it?" Iris asked.

The room was quiet. Naturally, Saoirse was the first to speak. "Solid point."

"This is what I've found over and over again. It's not that people don't associate Stark Industries with protection—for the most part they do. The problem is that they associate this protection coming at a high cost. Destruction, ruin. It's a risk dealing with a Stark."

"So, are you suggesting we drop the Stark name?" Pepper asked, sounding horrified.

"No," Iris and Saoirse said at the same time. Iris acquiesced to the blonde.

"You need to change what they associate the name with. It can't just be Tony Stark and protection anymore."

"This is where we branch into the attack plan," Marcus put in. "It typically takes a few weeks to gather ideas—"

"For Danling and Carson maybe," Saoirse interrupted. "Luckily you put me on this one instead of them." The face Marcus made in a response made it very clear how "lucky" he considered himself. "I may be some crazy asshole with a mouth that—well, you've been sitting here, I don't need to explain that shit—but I'm the best at what I do." Marcus looked at Pepper with a nod to support Saoirse's claim. "Put that together with this bitch who clearly knows what she's talking about and actually has all her shit together, and we'll come up with a solution in the next fifteen to twenty minutes. Execution plan may take a little longer." Iris liked Saoirse.

"What do you suggest?" Pepper asked, tucking a lock of ginger hair behind her ear.

"What we need to do is replace the association with destruction with one of growth. We also need to balance the feelings of uncertainty currently surrounding Stark Industries what with the Ultron incident and its constant rebranding."

"We don't—" Pepper was cut off by Saoirse's raised eyebrows.

"You used to be technology. Then you were weapons. Then you weren't weapons. Then you were Iron Man. Then you were more technology. Then you added clean energy. Then you added privatized security. Now we're about to come up with a new initiative or add on. This is a lot of jerking around for such a small window of time," Saoirse laid out.

"All of our changes have come from a desire to grow to fit the needs of our time," Pepper defended.

"And that is exactly what we are going to use as the point to get you back on top. Growing to fit the needs of our time. To make this stick, you need to show everyone how you've been doing this from the beginning. That means going legacy at the same time you're pushing forward."

"I don't get what you mean," Pepper shook her head slightly, her brow furrowing.

"She means that Tony Stark is not the only Stark," Iris caught on, looking at Pepper.

"You mean…his father?" Pepper asked, and the other two girls nodded. "He's not going to like that."

"Well, that's tough shit for him, frankly, because I bet he'd hate even more if his company went under," Saoirse returned.

"And how are we going to do all of this?" Pepper asked.

"Well, it will take time and a couple of thought out campaigns that I have yet to come up with, but I do have one idea for how we launch this whole thing," Saoirse proposed. "Stark Expo."

Pepper shook her head, nixing the idea with a wave of her hands. "The Expo is all about Tony's ego and last time we held one, there was a huge battle. No. That's the _opposite_ of what we want to do."

"Ah, but here's where the legacy comes in," Saoirse grinned. "Nothing at the Expo has anything to do with what Stark Industries is working on. It becomes sort of like an early Worlds Fair type of thing. What you'll do is call out for proposals of unrecognized scientists, 18 and up. Get in the communities, work with people. Encourage innovation. Showcase the best projects at the Expo. Make it a really simple fair grounds and wooden stages affair. It's meant to recognize the people and their products—not Stark."

The girl was a genius. There was no way around it. Iris could see the look on Pepper's face as she began to accept the brilliance of the idea.

"And when would this all happen?"

"In a month," Saoirse answered as if it was the most natural conclusion a person could come to.

"One month," Pepper repeated.

"Yeah, let's recognize people who already have firm ideas and basic prototypes. One week to gather proposals and basic prototypes. A week to sift through and approve them. We give them full disposal of Stark Industries resources and see what can be done in two weeks. Why make this harder by adding in a competition and ideas that clearly need more work? We can save that for a later initiative after this is successful."

Pepper was quiet as the other people at the table stared at her, waiting for her answer. And then she turned to Iris. "I hope you like sleeping in Stark Tower. It's going to be a long month."

 _And we can whisper things_

 _Secrets from my American dreams_

 _Baby needs some protection_

 _But I'm a kid like everyone else_

 **Ending Thoughts:** _I am so excited to bring back Saoirse. I love her and don't feel like I got to use her as much in Parting Shot as I wanted to. What do you think of her? Also, sorry this chapter was a little jumpy and very plot-focused? I wanted to fast forward through some of the boring filler (especially considering I know next to nothing about anthropology) and get to some good stuff. Hopefully you don't mind._


End file.
